Saudis Hit Yemen With Air Assault

1of 2Residents of the port city of Aden, Yemen, run toward a weapons depot to take up arms in preparation for a potential advance on the southern city by Houthi militiamen and their allies.Photo: Saleh Al-Obeidi / Getty Images

2of 2Yemeni President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi had been in hiding in Aden, but he might have since fled by sea.Photo: Jason DeCrow / Associated Press

WASHINGTON — Saudi Arabia announced Wednesday night it had begun a military campaign in Yemen, the beginning of what a Saudi official said was an offensive to restore a Yemeni government that had collapsed after rebel forces took control of large swaths of the country.

The air campaign began as the internal conflict in Yemen showed signs of degenerating into a proxy war between regional powers.

The Saudi announcement came during a rare news conference in Washington by Adel al-Jubeir, the kingdom’s ambassador to the United States.

Al-Jubeir said the Saudis were part of a coalition of about 10 nations determined to blunt the advance of Shiite Houthi rebels, who have overrun Yemen’s capital and forced the U.S.-backed government to flee the war-racked country.

Al-Jubeir did not name the other nations involved in the military campaign but said U.S. military forces were not involved in the airstrikes.

The offensive came as fighters and army units allied with the Houthi movement threatened to overrun the southern port of Aden, where the besieged president, Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi, had gone into hiding.

Yemen shares a long border with Saudi Arabia, a major U.S. ally, and the Saudis had been reported to be massing forces on the Yemen frontier as Hadi’s last redoubt in Aden looked increasingly imperiled.

The rapid advances by the president’s opponents included the seizure of a military air base and an aerial assault on his home.

There were unconfirmed reports that the president had fled the country by boat for Djibouti, the tiny Horn of Africa nation across the Gulf of Aden.

The region’s most impoverished country, Yemen has been a central theater of the U.S. fight against al-Qaida, and its possible collapse presents complex challenges for the Obama administration as it struggles to deal with instability and radical extremism in the Middle East.

By Wednesday morning, Houthi forces had seized Al Anad Air Base, which until recently had been used by U.S. counterterrorism forces, about 35 miles from Hadi’s refuge in Aden, the country’s second-largest city.

At nightfall, there were reports that Houthi forces were fighting around the Aden airport.

The Houthis, a minority religious group from northern Yemen, practice a variant of Shiite Islam and receive support from Iran.

But they are also collaborating with Yemeni security forces still loyal to former President Ali Abdullah Saleh, the longtime strongman who was pushed from power amid the Arab Spring uprising but now appears to be orchestrating a comeback in alliance with the Houthis.